


A Touch of Frost

by kitkatt0430



Series: Neighbors and Butterflies [5]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate backstory for Frost and Caitlin, Caitlin explaining Frost's origins to Ronnie, Caitlin's been more concerned about Frost than about anyone else, F/M, Gen, I'm sure Carla thought she was doing the right thing, Side Story, Thomas and Icicle are still out there somewhere, but Carla was very much not doing the right thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:54:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24964816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitkatt0430/pseuds/kitkatt0430
Summary: Caitlin's been lying nearly her whole life.  Because, honestly, who would have ever believed the truth?
Relationships: Killer Frost & Caitlin Snow, Ronnie Raymond/Caitlin Snow
Series: Neighbors and Butterflies [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1522898
Comments: 11
Kudos: 77





	A Touch of Frost

**Author's Note:**

> Initially this was going to be part of the next big story in this series, but I quickly realized there were too many pieces to keep track of for that story. Moving Parts was difficult enough to keep track of everything so I decided to split out a number of pieces into side stories before finally getting back into the main plot again.
> 
> I had fun coming up with Frost and Caitlin's altered origins here, a sort of look at what the two of them could have had if Caitlin hadn't been so afraid of Frost at first.

Caitlin had been keeping secrets for what felt like her whole life.

Even as a little kid, her dad had sworn her to secrecy about his research. He’d turned it into a game when she was a little, learning science alongside him as he worked to cure his ALS. To cure the ALS that lurked inside of Caitlin like a ticking time bomb where the timer was hidden from view.

When Caitlin was fourteen, her dad found the cure. And that was where things went very wrong.

She was old enough by then to know that her father’s was exhibiting the early stages of ALS and to understand that what was happening to him was what her future would hold. So when her dad said he had a cure, Caitlin was so relieved. And, at first, so was her mom.

Thomas Snow took the cure first. The nerve damage he’d begun to suffer halted and then reversed. The tremors in his hands went away. He wanted to give it to Caitlin next, as a preventative measure. Carla said no.

Caitlin might never exhibit symptoms of ALS. It was a possibility that she would, but it wasn’t set in stone. There was a genetic component to the disease, but that alone didn't guarantee that a person would start displaying symptoms. And since ALS symptoms didn’t typically start manifesting until a person was in their forties… given the experimental nature of the cure, Carla insisted they wait. The next step ought to have been using the cure on someone else who was already exhibiting symptoms of ALS and Thomas agreed that was the right direction for the research to take.

He lied. Or maybe he didn’t. Caitlin never was quite clear on when Icicle began to manifest.

Her father swore her to secrecy and offered Caitlin a chance to take the cure anyway. And Caitlin had done a lot of research on ALS. She was fourteen and terrified of what that would mean for her future. For her future partner, who’d have to look after her as she deteriorated. She knew there were risks, but her dad seemed fine. Better than fine. Of course she said yes.

What her mother didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, but it might just keep Caitlin safe in the future.

It was after that things began to get weird. Her parents abruptly put accepting test applicants on hold. They were suddenly never home. Carla was telling people that Thomas’ ALS was getting worse as an excuse, but Caitlin knew that was a lie. She didn’t understand why her parents were lying when her father was cured.

But Caitlin started to feel very uncomfortable with the fact that she’d taken an essentially untested cure for a genetic disease she wasn’t yet displaying symptoms for. She was starting to worry that, maybe, her mother had a point and Caitlin had chosen wrongly.

It was summer break at that point and Caitlin went biking all over town, just to get away from her family’s empty house. There was a biking trail in particular that she liked, which ran through a forested park. One afternoon, Caitlin took a curve too sharply and her bike skidded out from under her and she went down hard. Skinned her knees and broke her wrist. Her helmet saved her from injuring the side of her face, though her chin wasn’t so lucky. Nor her tongue, which she bit hard enough to cause bleeding.

Caitlin had screamed in pain, but her voice was wrong. She’d thought it was shock until she saw herself in the mirrors she kept on her bike. Ice blue eyes looked back at her. Her hair turned white. And before her very eyes the bloody gash on her chin knitted itself back up.

She felt like someone else. Someone who could protect herself from harm and heal her own hurts. And that was, in retrospect, the moment Frost was born. Though Caitlin wouldn’t meet her until later.

* * *

“Ronnie… do you remember what I told you, about why I decided to bio-chemist and geneticist?” Caitlin honestly couldn’t remember exactly what she’d told him. Mostly the truth, sprinkled with lies made up as much with words as with omissions.

“Because your father died of ALS and you wanted to find a cure for it before you started...” he frowned and then his eyes widened with worry. “You’re not...”

“No,” Caitlin shook her head. “I’m far too young to be exhibiting symptoms,” she assured him. Not that she ever would have to worry about the symptoms of this particular disease.

“That’s a relief,” Ronnie sighed, bring Caitlin’s hand up to place a kiss on her knuckles. “So what brought this up, then?”

“There’s something I need to tell you. I wasn’t… completely truthful about… my reasons. Or about my parents.” Caitlin closed her eyes. This was going to be hard.

_Not chickening out on me, are you Caity?_

_No. All I’ve ever wanted was to wake you back up. If he can’t handle the truth, better I know now. You’re not going to be my dirty little secret, Frost._ Caitlin’s thought’s were fierce. _Never. I love you too much to do that to you._

* * *

Frost started off as the voice in the back of Caitlin’s head. Who gave bad advice, let’s be honest.

But she made Caitlin smile and laugh and feel human for the first time in… forever. Caitlin was pretty certain that Frost and the powers she’d exhibited after falling off her bike were connected to the ALS treatment, which was a relief. She’d been expecting something awful to happen, like developing symptoms of the disease at her very young age, but instead she gains nifty powers and an alter ego who was sarcastic and said ‘fuck’ but also loved Caitlin and wanted nothing more than to protect her.

In retrospect, it was Frost who needed protecting.

They experimented together with their powers a lot that summer. Frost’s control of their powers was better than Caitlin’s. More often than not, Caitlin’s attempts to use their powers would push her back and bring Frost to the fore. Not that Caitlin minded.

Caitlin wanted to share everything with Frost. She’d never had a best friend or a sibling before, but if felt like she did now.

Neither were keen on telling anyone either. Caitlin was worried they’d be sent to therapy to try and ‘reintegrate’ them or whatever. They weren’t split personalities in the traditional sense. Frost was her own person, separate from Caitlin, and she deserved to remain that way.

Frost was concerned about how Carla and Thomas would react. Caitlin was Carla’s daughter and Frost doubted that parental love would extend to her. And Thomas had become volatile. Unstable. Unfamiliar.

Frost had been right to worry.

* * *

“I think, in part, Frost came from my loneliness. Because she filled up all the parts of me that longed for someone to share my life with,” Caitlin told Ronnie.

He’d been quiet as she told him about that summer with Frost. About her father’s slow break down and her mother’s icy walls. Ronnie had simply reached out to hold Caitlin’s hands and listen.

But he spoke now. “Your father had another personality develop inside him too, didn’t he?”

“Yes. He did. And they developed powers like Frost and I did too.” Caitlin hesitated a moment. “Frost came from a place of loneliness and love. Icicle came from anger… and hate. Or maybe he learned that hatred later.”

She took a shuddering breath and then continued on. “Things went on pretty much the same way when summer ended and we went back to school. I wanted Frost to be able to have more time out, but we both agreed it wasn’t safe. So I was in control at school and around mom and dad, when they were around anyway. And Frost was in control for the rest. It worked out well for us pretty much that whole semester. And then, somehow, mom found out dad had used the treatment on me and the balance Frost and I had found together… fell apart.”

* * *

Carla had been furious that they’d gone behind her back regarding the cure. Caitlin had been summoned to their shared lab outside of town to find her parents screaming at each other, Thomas’ features turned pale, his eyes blue, his hair white… his voice carrying with it the same crystalline qualities that Frost’s did.

And in their shock, Frost took over and asked, “are you like me?”

Icicle’s smile had been a malevolent thing that frightened both girls. He said yes.

Caitlin and Frost weren’t so sure.

When Icicle attacked and tried to kill Carla later that evening, Frost protected her. Protected Caitlin. She fought Icicle and the summer they’d spent practicing gave her the upper hand. They knocked him unconscious and Carla took him away.

Caitlin never could figure out what happened to Thomas after that.

She’d thought that because Frost saved their mother’s life, Carla would learn to accept Frost. Caitlin had thought wrong.

Caitlin woke up Christmas morning to emptiness in her head. She broke down screaming for Frost, but there was nothing. Silence. Emptiness and loneliness.

Carla had drugged her the night before with some kind of inhibitor. It hadn’t worked on Thomas and Icicle, but it worked on Caitlin and Frost, binding away both Caitlin’s powers and her dearest friend.

And when Carla finished confessing what she’d done – for her daughter’s safety – Caitlin called her a murderer.

She called her mother a murderer every day they saw each other until Caitlin went away to college. And it only stopped then because Caitlin never went home after that. She hadn’t seen her mother since she was eighteen and told her that her presence in Caitlin’s life would never be welcome again.

* * *

“I started trying to bring Frost back pretty much immediately. I started learning meditation techniques to try and reach her that way and I went into science to try and figure out how my mother had blocked her and our powers. To see if I could find a way to reverse it.”

“You never told me before because Frost and your powers were still inaccessible,” Ronnie guessed quietly. “You thought I wouldn’t believe you. What changed?”

“Were is definitely the right tense.” Caitlin squeezed his hands lightly. “I did, eventually, discover how my mother locked Frost away from me. But I couldn’t reverse the effects. When I came to STAR Labs, I learned more about dark matter and dark energy from you. Catch all terms for potentially billions upon billions of kinds of matter and energy that we’ve yet to discover. And I began to hope that the accelerator experiment might uncover a form of energy that would stabilize the formula I was working on to reverse what my mother did to Frost.

“When the experiment failed, not only did I lose what I feared was my only chance to bring my other half back to life… I lost you too. I didn’t think losing anyone could break my heart the same way losing Frost did. But I was wrong.

“I needed a break before I went back to trying to find some other way to free Frost. So I threw myself into our meta human research. It didn’t even occur to me to test myself to see if the dark energies released that night had any affect on my own cells. But they did. All this time, the damage my mother inflicted to force Frost and my powers into hibernation had been slowly reversing. The night I spoke to you and Stein in the garage...”

“We nearly burned you by accident when our powers flared,” Ronnie said, tone distant. “It’s hard to remember. I was so sure we’d hurt you. But you weren’t burned when we saw you again.”

Caitlin let go of Ronnie’s hands and let the power – let Frost – come to the fore. “My powers protected Caity,” she said, tone sharp and forceful to cover her nerves. The last time they’d told anyone about her, things hadn’t gone well, after all. “I should thank you. That shock of adrenaline was just what we needed to turn our powers back on and wake me back up. But you did nearly hurt Caitlin, so don’t hold your breath waiting for a Hallmark card.”

“You must be Frost,” Ronnie said after a moment’s startled hesitation, a soft smile on his face. “I’m glad to meet you.”

He meant it too. Caitlin could tell.

Frost tilted her head to the side and gave him an appraising look. Caity might be certain about him, but Frost needed more time to make up her own mind. For now, though, he seemed to be trying. She’d give him that much, at least. So she smirked and nodded. “Cool.”


End file.
